We Should Die Except for Death

there is a solitude beneath
street lamps and through
novembers that are anonymous
as abandonment whose elements

are through many places
once cherished, and many faces
once beloved, though
there is a time for loneliness

in the human life cycle
a time to get stronger when alone
just to know that there are no
permanent realization, even love

can be taken away at any moment
we ask for what means most
and have it taken away
I wanted the river to go on

flowing the same way, and somewhere
in wanting to possess
I lost the thing I most valued
among many other stories

in the city, death cries slowly
in the long years that drag
in our prodigal decline we
might summarize all we ever thought

in a flash of voices, in a
gesture that meant everything
and nothing, that everything
was symbolic, even the perennial

lessons in experience, mere afterthoughts
like the snow that softens moments
after it hits the pavement
the pavement that belongs to nobody
that snow that belongs to all.

Psalm 9 – The Violence

O Lord, how forgiveness
Frees us from the past
And acceptance, empties us of
Traumatic memories, it is ordained

That our fate should have
Highs and lows, though there is
Always somehow the feeling
Of something like the presence of God

Or the potential for angels
And the proximity of nature
Or the caress of silence
And the quantum dominion of

Powers we cannot fully understand
The prophecy of secrets
And the workings of the invisible
But the beasts in the field play

Just as Man does his part to acquire
To mate, to make war and steal the
Lot of his neighbor, to overcome
His own fears and insecurities

And profit, in the trials of others
Let it not be said we are better
Than animals, for I have seen
Man in all his glory and vanity

And even the most intelligent men
Were better villains than in the stories
And Man killed exceptionally well
Even in his more mature wisdom.

The Flat Land

(a play on words based on T.S Eliot’s the Waste Land)

November is the cruelest month, destroying
What once was for what will be
The snow will stalk our dreams, hoping
To fill the emptiness of another summer’s end
Earth will forget the dead
As I forget what it was to be a student

Labour fuels my hours, surviving
One year to the next, a broken man
Where is the Spring I once knew so well?
Where is my heart in this cruel world?
Where is time but in these broken images?
Memory is insufficient to be my food

The wind howls and I am the trees
Who have endured so much, again and again
The famous shadows on the ground mean nothing
They are what they were, darkness spreading
These unreal cities are all the same
With their cosmopolitan jargon and anonymity

Each trying to out duel the next, competition
In the workplace, in the dating market
One must be so careful these days
Friends depart without a trace, elders die
Families get divided, partners divorce
The winter dawn has its own beauty

A short and infrequent storm, the bloom
Of white to carpet our weary feet
On roads of fate, sometimes without shelters
Without kindred souls who know us deeply
The synthetic atmospheres of urban life
A society of white walkers, whose truth

Only mimics the fallen empires of liberty
The false figures of unemployment rates
Which do not count those who have given up
Indebted states, welfare states, police states
And the persistent rumour that democracy is dead.

Photo Courtesy:

1. http://www.deviantart.com/art/November-102099308

2. http://www.deviantart.com/art/november-273637092

The Soul Achieves Herself without effort

Gradual is our relationship
with the grace behind nature
another spectral October Fall
how the wizard sun confines

and the flamingo sunsets wave goodbye
the fires ebb, the flowers cease
their sport, the stars wink
at snowflakes on their fall

to carpet a sparkling web
sapphire moments drift by
at dusk in the cities
there is a soft glimmer

in the streets, it is cold outside
as we bow one by one into
our brief solitude, with visions
to guide us for the labours of tomorrow

paralyzed by the savings of gold
or the lack of savings in our bank accounts
the wisdom of life is a brief release
the details we once scrutinized

no longer seem so important after all
to live a good life, means different things
at separate points in our story
and nothing in the end intoxicates

like the God neurochemical
call it what you will, the spirit
lives on after all these subplots
the search for a diviner brand

of metaphysics, philosophy, utopia
until there are no visitors to our soul
but a diviner truth, a more united feeling
gradual is our relationship
with what’s beyond the scope of years.

Photo Courtesy:

1. http://www.deviantart.com/art/Be-on-the-road-with-warmly-thoughts-482560577
2. http://www.deviantart.com/art/Deer-Collaboration-483167431

An Era Of Clandestine Golden Coins

These days we see it differently
The ambiance of the sun is spotting
She is bleeding afternoons differently
Like a dove’s flight in a countryside late afternoon
The pictures are about breeze

In the city with an empty stomach
Always aching for the frequency of nature
It’s a heathen country, to be born in Beijing
The drinking waters’ contents are secret to us
Chancing to query at the impossible odds

I ask for directions, in a direction-less world
With only the scripts they give us
These days I see it differently
When am I to find the higher way
When the world is a sold-out search engine

It reminds me of death, the corporate-system
These people will be replaced with clones
And will not know the difference, believing
Themselves to be unique, it’s a different genealogy
I know more kinsman left by love unconditionally

Their lives a routine of pre-defined conditions
Everyone has become a fill-in, like migrant workers
Beautiful women barter the calendar of every day.